Abuse of silence

Written by Réda Ait Chégou - Visuals by Shejtano

Abuse of silence (bad seeds never die) is a pamphlet. A regurgitation of sorrows finding their way outside of a body they could no longer occupy into the manifestation of a self that is no longer. An attempt to invoke the story of a woman scorned through the dreadful ending of her first love story within her new found self. It is a collection of unexpected streams of thoughts, written half conscious in the middle of the night, still unaware of its own materiality.
From pain to ink, a natural flow manifests itself transcending the author's experience to an unruled, wild and raw poetic form. Between the author and the pages of the book, there is no other dynamic than the deep trauma resurfacing and her inability to control its fundamental expression. As if the words were escaping her soul involuntarily, suddenly giving sense to a whole new emotional territory while grieving, burying an old self, and embracing the metamorphosis as it takes place.
This oeuvre is the testament of an emotional transformation within a physical transition. An unutterable truth appears uninvited performing a "dark dance", a "solo show" leading the author through a painful yet healing self aware journey. A vulnerable piece, unburdened of all discrimination associated with the writer's mother tongue, English bridges an emotional core to its physical manifestation through a language that dissociates her from the traumas she overcame.
The reader gets the opportunity to sit, see themselves mirrored through this intimate body of work, contemplating their lived experiences abetted by a universal feeling of love, the fear of losing it and the fundamental daddy issue. Is love a tangible action or a magical feeling? Was the love there or is she still dreaming unaware?
"Abuse of silence, the fundamental one, oppressors got me speechless and you did too."

Réda Ait Chégou is a French-Algerian writer, editor, facilitator and trans activist. Her sensitive work bridges the worlds of fashion, visual art, and literature. She is the founder of the experimental publication and platform Draft 001.
Her first and newest poetry book, "abuse of silence (bad seeds never die)", is intended as an entrance into the labyrinthine channels of healing and trauma, observing a body in constant psychic transformation. It is a survival testimony. Through the intimacy of her language, she raises a critique on the abuse of silence as a strategy used by oppressors to maintain the dogma of homogeneity. Her practice is deeply rooted in using the autobiographical as a source point for an expanded analysis of issues facing queer identities.